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Surrealism/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim views a painting by Max Ernst. It looks like a red cylindrical top with hands and a head that resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa. TIM: Huh, I'm not sure I get it. Tim proceeds to a famous painting of a man in a bowler hat, whose face is covered by a green apple. TIM: Well, this one looks familiar...hey, wait a minute! Tim notices that Moby is actually standing in front of the painting. He is dressed up exactly like the man in the painting with a green apple hanging from his face. MOBY: Beep. Moby steps forward holding a letter. Tim reads from the typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, I have to write a report on Surrealist art. Can you tell me what it is? Sincerely, Tristan. In a nutshell, Surrealism is a type of art dealing with the relationship between the real world, the imagination, and the subconscious mind. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, the subconscious is the part of your mind that's active when you're dreaming, so a lot of surrealist art has a kind of dreamlike quality. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Hey, I didn't know that robots had dreams. MOBY: Beep. Moby's dream is filled with seemingly unconnected images: a table with a sneaker on it, a military man holding a clipboard, an upside down stop sign, a toaster with lizard feet and tail, a hooded robot, a man and boy standing in water, Tim's friends Cassie and Rita, and a giant bee. Moby scratches his head. TIM: Huh. Anyway, in Surrealist art, people, backgrounds, and objects are often drawn or painted in a realistic style. But the different elements are arranged in an unrealistic or impossible way. It's kind of like how things in dreams seem real, but are often put together in a strange or unlikely way. An image shows a Surrealist painting by Salvador Dali that has the qualities Tim describes, such as a ghostlike head that is also a fruit dish and other strange people and objects grouped together on a beach. TIM: Surrealism wasn't just about visual art, though; it was a whole movement. There were surrealist books, poems, music, even movies! Images illustrate the Surrealist mediums Tim describes. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Why? Well, uh, it's kind of a long story. The first few decades of the 10th Century were a revolutionary period. Electricity, the telephone, the radio, the automobile, all of these inventions really took off between 1900 and 1920. Images show the inventions Tim lists. TIM: And with World War I happening around the same time, life just seemed to have completely changed in a short period of time. An image shows soldiers in trenches holding rifles. TIM: There was also a revolution of ideas. Albert Einstein redefined our understanding of time and space, and Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology, began studying people's dreams. He had some pretty radical ideas about what went on in people's minds. Side by side images show Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, Freud had a big influence on the Surrealists. During this time, artists were struggling to come up with new and interesting ways to portray the world around them. The Surrealists were a big part of this artistic revolution. Surrealism, which reached its peak in the 1920s and 30s, rejected the everyday world and created its own reality, based on the inside of the artist's mind. The idea was that by reproducing the thoughts and the activities of the subconscious, artists could depict ideas that were also more truthful and interesting than everyday reality. An animation shows a human silhouette viewing a city skyline from a park. The background changes to white and the silhouette is filled with swirling colors. A thought bubble appears in the same colorful pattern. MOBY: Beep. TIM: I know, it's kind of hard to wrap your head around. Maybe if we look at some pictures you'll get a better idea. That one you were playing around with before, the thing with the hat? That's by a Belgian Surrealist name René Magritte. An image shows the painting of the man in the suit with the apple in front of his face. TIM: This piece is called The Persistance of Memory, and it was painted in 1931 by the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. An image shows the painting that features melting time pieces. TIM: Dali was probably the most famous Surrealist of all time, both for his paintings and his flamboyant personality. An image shows Dali with his piercing eyes and thin handlebar mustache that turns up at the ends. TIM: The background of his Persistence piece is totally realistic; it's a coastline in Catalonia, Spain. But if you look closely, you can see a distorted human face in the middle, and it appears to be sleeping. You can easily tell what the other objects are: pocket-watches, ants, a fly, and a tree. But the watches don't behave like normal watches: they're, like, they're sort of melting. And when was the last time you saw a bunch of ants eating a watch? An image shows the painting again. Arrows point to the things Tim describes. TIM: Dali's point is that humans in the real world believe that time is straight, rigid, and inflexible. To him, time is not a fixed constant. It's soft, flexible, and organic, almost like a, like a soft piece of cheese. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Hey, great. I'm glad you get it now! An image shows Dali's Persistence painting but all of the melting watch faces have been replaced with Moby's face. TIM: Whoa. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Arts & Music Transcripts